Inspiration comes from many sources, be it heartbreak (see Beck's 'Sea Changes' or Bob Dylan's 'Blood On The Tracks'), death (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' 'Murder Ballads') or even simple tributes to fallen heroes (Radiohead's 'Harry Patch (In Memory Of)'). But for Kaiser Chiefs it's just simple boredom.

Having taken time off after their hometown appearance at the Leeds Festival last year, frontman Ricky Wilson has told the BBC that a state of inertia has spurred him back to work.

He said, "After a couple of months [off] we got bored. Then I got really bored, then mind-numbingly bored and that's when you start thinking about the fact you want to get up and do something again."

After a full day of announcing artists one at a time on social networking sites like Twitter and MySpace, Bonnaroo has finally unveiled its full 2010 lineup. It's a good thing they only unveiled it only in spurts at first -- the full lineup is so stacked and top-heavy it's hard to take it all in at once. Seriously.

This year's gathering -- which will take place from June 10 to 13 at the festival's 700-acre homestead in Manchester, Tenn. -- will be headlined by Dave Matthews Band, Jay-Z, Stevie Wonder and, newly-crowned Grammy royalty, the Kings of Leon. There are a gazillion other, equally exciting artists rounding out the lineup, including Zac Brown Band, Jeff Beck, Dead Weather, Phoenix, Weezer, Avett Brothers, the National, Tori Amos, Les Claypool, Miike Snow, They Might Be Giants, the Black Keys and Tenacious D. And so on.

While MTV may have recently removed the word "music" from its logo, New Orleans' Galactic is resurrecting that network's abandoned "Total Request Live" ("TRL") show, albeit in their own funky way. Galactic's TRL stands for "Throwdown Request Live" and the band launched the series recently with jam rockers Tea Leaf Green in New York and Philadelphia.

The second part of Galactic's TRL series will take place later this month in St. Louis, Denver and Missoula when they welcome co-headliners Karl Denson's Tiny Universe to the stage for a special one-time jam featuring both full bands. The foundation for the jams will be a classic rock staple, which will be different at all three stops. In TRL fashion, fans can visit the website to vote for which songs the bands will perform together.

Funk mastermind George Clinton is in mourning over not one but three big losses in recent months. Most immediately, Clinton's 50-year-old son, George Clinton Jr., passed away from liver disease on February 1. Junior sang backup on many P-Funk cuts and had been working with his own band, GCIII, in Florida leading up to his untimely death. A maintenance man found his body inside his apartment after nobody had seen him for a few days. He is survived by his daughter, Shonda Clinton, who fans may know as P-Funk rapper Sativa Diva.

On February 5, Clinton suffered a second significant loss to his extended P-Funk family with the passing of singer Mahlia Franklin. A back-up singer for various P-Funk configurations, Franklin became lead singer for Parlet, an all-female Parliament offshoot that was originally conceived by Clinton as a sister group to Brides of Funkenstein.

Wintertime means cold weather and heavy snowfall for those of us in non-tropical climes, which is a mixed blessing. Sure, there's snowboarding and snowmen, but how does that help when your car is stuck in a snowdrift? More than a few artists have mined the rich metaphoric potential of winter in music videos, usually to melancholy and SAD effect (that's Seasonal Affective Disorder, by the way). Baby, it's cold outside, so read on for some frosty encouragement while you thaw out your fingers with a mug of something hot and boozy.


10. 'The Water,' Feist
The full 15-minute version of this excerpt from 'The Water' is more short film than video, with the moody and melancholic title song floating through only briefly. It's a mysterious, near-silent opus directed by Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew, and it stars Cillian Murphy (of '28 Days Later' fame), veteran Canadian actor David Fox and Ms. Leslie Feist herself. Father and son lug a mummy-like corpse through still and snowy woods to a cabin. But the cadaver soon proves to have a little life in it yet. This clip is reminiscent of the québécois film 'Mon Oncle Antoine,' a chilly Canadian classic that also involves corpses and snow and angst.

Artist: Jared Evan
Video: 'Frozen'
Highlight: In this mysterious black-and-white clip, players partake in a terrifying Russian Roulette-esque game.

Chromeo's P-Thugg is on the hunt -- for tales to tell his future grandchildren, that is. Considering the bizzaro assortment of gigs these electro-funk lovers have booked of late -- from world-famous museums to the Winter Olympics -- the gold-toothed half of the debonair dance duo will have no shortage of vocodered words of wisdom to dispense to his descendents when the time comes.

There was the sweaty DJ set at New York's Guggenheim last Friday night on the swan song soirée of the museum's First Fridays Art After Dark series. "It was really cool cause it's a beautiful place, kind of weird and crazy cool," growled Pee, on the horn from the Williamsburg, Brooklyn studio where he and Dave 1 are making Chromeo's third album, aiming for a summer release.

Alas, First Fridays will be no more. "It was the last one, they said they had problems with the sound rumbling and moving the art pieces."